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[labellementeuse]

God. I have done NOTHING today but get bogged down in the 3rd Meditation. I've been here since 11, it's now 7:30, and I have accomplished a wordcount of exactly zero, and a read page count of about three. I watched BSG and Doctor Who (*scream* both amazing! And I didn't hate Donna!) and bummed around and read fanfiction and bummed around some more and I know 2000 words isn't a lot or anything, but I *really really* need to have read Meditations and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding to write the damn thing and I *really really* am out of time and I am desperately, desperately bogged down in the Third Meditation. And by the way, there are SIX meditations.


I think the problem here is that I am really not interested in questions of epistemology. If I had known this course was going to be about epistemology, I would not have taken it, and I am SERIOUSLY reconsidering the HAPS paper I'm doing next semester which is taught by the same guy and presumably will cover some of the same stuff. (Except I need a third year paper, and all of the other third year papers I'm interested in were on THIS semester, and - ) And also, I really really *hate* the third meditation because I completely disagree with it, and am having serious trouble articulating why. In the 3rd meditation Descartes says that ideas we have must be as real, or less real, than their sources - basically, you can't get something from nothing. Ideas are like pictures or representations of their source, and they can't be more perfect or more great than the original source. Now, for example (because Descartes is in the throes of doubting at this point) we can imagine that the ideas of a horse, or of a stone, can come from our own mind (he gives a complicated reason for this involving substance, but it's reasonably intuitive that a human is as complex, great, and perfect as a horse. maybe more so, depending on how you feel about horses.) However, he says, we cannot say the same thing about our idea of God, since the idea of God is the idea of something infinite, immutable, blah blah - all things which human beings fundamentally are not. Therefore, God exists, because we have the idea of him.

... at least, I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying. I might be wrong because, like I said, I'm bogged down, because I REALLY hate that conclusion but I'm not totally sure where he's going wrong - is he wrong that something cannot come from nothing? is he mistaken about the perfectness of the source - i.e., is the human mind actually as infinite as the concept of god? is infinity just a short-hand? (Actually, I think this is potentially an interesting criticism. Maybe the idea of infinity can't be sourced in a finite object, but when we think of infinity, we don't genuinely think of infinity, because it literally cannot be conceived - we're imagining the absence of finiteness, and since we can perfectly well imagine finiteness, we can imagine absence of finiteness well enough. In other words, thinking "God can do anything" is possible, but anything means only the things we can think of, which obviously can be sourced in our own minds; whereas thinking "God can do [all things]" is impossible, because we can't actually think of [all things], and therefore we actually can't conceive of an infinite God - the things we think about God can come perfectly well from within us. This might make it into the essay but I'm not sure it's totally relevant to the essay topic.)

siiiiiiiigh.


ALSO. It's 8pm and because daylight savings ended today it's dark outside and it's also cold and I forgot to bring a jumper and hi, winter, fuck you very much.

Normally I'm pretty fond of winter! Especially because it's technically autumn and I love autumn! But not when I forget me jumper. Grrr.

Comments

[kitsunerei88]

If it's logically valid, attack the premises? ^^''

I think I would argue that something can come from nothing . . . But then again, I avoid writing papers like the plague, so I wouldn't know. ^^

Good luck! ^^

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously something coming from nothing is kind of a definitive feature of our current picture of the universe. But that doesn't mean it's philosophically defensible, unfortunately. Happily, I don't have to argue that. ;)

[duskshadows.livejournal.com]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOKAY from what i remember of doing two years of decent philosophy at Hagley and one paper in which i bullshitted a B+, you've pretty much summed up Descartes argument for the third meditation pretty well, the whole ideal-idea, referent-referred thing. (the thought of the horse is as good as our perception of the horse)
the thing with God is we have no sensory experience of the infinite (unlike that horse), so we cannot perceive of God in the same way we perceive other things.
the great argument about the imagining what god can do is "God is all-powerful, so he could create a boulder so heavy even He could not lift it. But, if he was truly all powerful, then he could lift anything. DENIED." XD (i'm just quoting from my arse, here.)
i have a feeling once you get further through the Meditations it makes a bit more sense, because, and this is 4-year-old-memory here, i think he ends up refuting part of the statement you're pissed at. XD

wow. i think philosophy was actually the only thing i took out of three years at high school. go team!

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Oh, I finished them, but as far as I'm concerned it's still not my idea of a good time - it's very circular and utterly dependent on the reader sharing Descartes' conceptions of God, which means that most of his later meditations are pretty unpopular these days. Anyway, my problem isn't reallllly understanding what he's saying, it's getting a handle/opinion on it of my own. Eh. Whatever, it's in now :P